New Bedford woman loses 165 pounds, discovers love of running

Monday

Dec 30, 2013 at 12:01 AM

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — It’s New Year’s resolution time again and the message from Lauriann DeSousa is simple: You can do it! She speaks from experience. She’s lost 165 pounds over two years and is planning...

By Peter C.T. Elsworth

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — It’s New Year’s resolution time again and the message from Lauriann DeSousa is simple: You can do it!

She speaks from experience. She’s lost 165 pounds over two years and is planning to run a marathon in the fall of 2014, having already run in numerous 5Ks, 10Ks and half-marathons. Your goal may not be to lose weight, but DeSousa’s achievement is surely an inspiration to all of us.

“I don’t know where it came from,” she said of her morbid obesity when she topped the scales at 317 pounds during her first visit to Weight Watchers on Sept. 9, 2009. “As a child, I was always thin, but at middle school and high school I put on the pounds.”

The weight problems were compounded following her two pregnancies with sons Nicholas and Owen.

“I had gestational diabetes during both pregnancies and had to be careful [not to eat carbohydrates],” DeSousa said. “As soon as I gave birth it went away and I made up for all the [lost] time.”

DeSousa, 41, continued to gain weight. Her husband, James, was always supportive. “He never said anything about my weight,” she said. “He would make suggestions but he never nagged me.”

The turning point came during a visit to Six Flags in 2009, when she was asked to leave a water rafting ride because of safety concerns over her size. She was with her sons, who were then 14 and 17.

“They rode and I went off and cried,” she said.

She initially felt embarrassed, went into a depression and reckoned she gained even more pounds. Then she got angry.

“I figured my two boys will want to do things like that (ride),” DeSousa said. “I started changing things.”

She started walking and a friend suggested she look into Weight Watchers.

She has never looked back. She now works for the company, having starting as a receptionist and now working toward becoming a team leader. She noted all employees have gone through the program themselves, and employee name badges include their initial weight.

The Weight Watchers program is not just a diet but a lifestyle change, DeSousa said, involving both moderation and awareness of food plus a focus on exercise and activity.

She began to see the pounds slip away. “I used to pick up a gallon of milk or a five pound bag of potatoes and say to my kids, ‘That’s how much weight I lost this week.’”

When she had lost 65 pounds, she told Owen she had lost “a whole one of him.” A big moment came when he wrapped his arms around her and said he could touch his elbows.

Meanwhile, husband James joined in. “Whatever you do, I’m going to do,” he told her. They have lost a combined 200 pounds.

After losing 135 pounds, she started running on a treadmill.

“I was close to my goal but I could not lose a stubborn 30 pounds,” DeSousa said.

She started slow, mixing walking and running.

“I got up to five kilometers (3.1 miles) on the treadmill and one day my girlfriend said, ‘Let’s take it outside.’”

She started running outside in March 2011.

“As soon as I went outside it changed everything for me, the love I have for running,” she said. “I leave it all out there. I walked my first 100 pounds off but now I hate walking. I have to run it and I keep upping myself.”

The outside running led to 5Ks and longer races. “My first 5K was in June, Father’s Day, 2011 and my first 10K was in October 2011,” she said.

Then on Feb. 22, 2012, she was training for her first half-marathon when she had a heart attack.

She collapsed by the side of the road and James, who had been following her on an app, rushed from work to help. She was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford and subsequently treated at Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River. “It was a blockage,” she said, adding that the cardiologists concluded it had nothing to do with her weight loss and running.

She was running again five weeks later and now sees a cardiologist who specializes in working with athletes. “Even when I was morbidly obese I had good cholesterol and blood pressure,” she said.

Now she’s focused on living a healthy lifestyle, noting that before she turned her life around the family often ate fast food and her idea of dieting was starving.

“My biggest tactic was starving myself, not eat all day and then eat dinner,” she said. “Now I eat all day long — breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack.” Breakfast may be oatmeal and a banana, a snack of fruit and yogurt, lunch a soup and salad and so on. She tries to avoid refined sugar such as cakes, cookies and ice cream, but occasionally eats them in moderation, always making sure her daily diet is balanced according to the Weight Watcher point system.

She runs with the Greater New Bedford Track Club, which she calls good motivation. She competed in a half-marathon in Newport in the fall of 2012 and plans to run in the Ashworth Awards Baystate Marathon in Lowell, Mass., next October.

“Weight Watchers is not a diet, it’s a lifestyle,” DeSousa said. “You change your life for the rest of your life. I’m very devoted and determined. I’m not going back.”